As a nice tradition, some events have given out badges that inspire the visitors to tinker with them, to give everybody a common thing to work on. At the CCCamp 2015 this was the Rad1o. This badge is a full Software Defined Radio on one board. As everyone present had one, the possibilities for experimentation with this advanced device were large, and there were some events that used the badge, like a beginners workshop and a foxhunt.
There are a lot of things to learn with this device, from soldering the optional parts, getting a casing (thanks FablabTruck), uploading firmware, configuration, to animating and more. All that is even without using it for the SDR functions.
Once you start discovering that part of the device, things like antenna’s, frequencies, modulation and more get into view, and things get really interesting. The install of the software can sometimes be a bit tricky, but once you are set-up, lots of information is available on the web, like Michael Ossmann‘s introduction course into SDR with a very similar device. Some info from others can be found here.
Since its initial use during the CCCamp its firmware has changed a lot. The stated “current release” was still REV02 from 13th of August though, and no-one was doing an update. That is why I just uploaded a REV03 “Ketchup” version of the firmware to the wiki. It is just a build of the current GitHub with one change, the change of the REV. Here are the update instructions. As this badge will be the current CCC badge for the next four years, it could get a lot of extra features in the next years. I am very interested in seeing this firmware grow better.
I would like to do a good changelog of the changes since REV02 and have some info from the Git, but I would like your help. If you have more information about what was changed in the Rad1o FW please contact me at the “info” address on this site.
Also, if you did some cool experiments or had interesting experiences with the board, please let me know.
I personally have experimented with some antennas, and will do a writeup about this later.
